Two passes – Public and Press – for parking to witness the landing of the first Space Shuttle orbital flight, STS-1. The government threat/verbiage on the back is a little creepifyin’ but I’m pretty sure it’s expired by now (probably expired the moment it landed). These passes were scanned at 300 DPI and are presented at Blog-Rez. Higher rez versions are available at the APR blog, and full rez at my Patreon.

These passes were obtained via an eBay purchase, and were “extras” to the items I was actually after (detailed large format diagrams of the Shuttle flight instrumentation). This purchase was made possible by my Patreon contributors. So if you like this sort of thing, please consider contributing to my Patreon campaign. Every little bit helps! The full-rez scans are available to all Patreon contributors.

Where David Duchovny (an American of Ukrainian, Polish and Scottish extraction) fantasizes about how things might’ve been different if he was Russian. Well, things keep going the way they are, the Ukrainian and Polish parts of his ancestry just might wind up being Russian…

So we’ve seen Vlad Putin doing his best to emulate a certain charismatic community organizer from the 1930’s: by using nonsensical appeals to nationalist-ethnic identity, he has tried to snap up chunks of surrounding nations, with some success.

But now it looks like much of the rest of Europe wants to relive parts of the 1930’s:

Now, here the issue of Europe’s growing anti-semitism is disconnected from Putin’s actions. But a large proportion of the anti-semitism in Europe has arisen from a dumbth-filled growing ideology, a combination religion and political-domination movement. This time, many of the Jews who are packing up and leaving Europe are heading to Israel, which option they mostly didn’t have 80 years ago, rather than coming to the US. But as they leave Europe and take their skills and talents with them Europe will suffer and Israel will benefit as the US did last time. The last time Europe’s driving-out of the Jews led in no small part to the US getting The Bomb. One wonders what Israel might end up with. With luck, it’ll be something that will allow Europe to accomplish with its current crop of anti-semites what the post-war de-nazification programs accomplished. It will be interesting if, in a decade or so, a certain religion and its symbols are as legal in Europe as Nazism and swastikas are today in Germany…

Found on the back of a 1963 issue of “Space World” magazine was this piece of artwork depicting an unusual – and perhaps fanciful – spacecraft. The same artwork had appeared earlier – at least as far back as 1961 – in a magazine ad for the Garrett AiResearch corporation. The artwork was thus *probably* created in-house at Garrett. Since Garrett was a manufacturer of turboprop engines and electronics, not an aircraft or spacecraft design firm, this is unlikely to have been a serious engineering effort. Still, it’s interesting to see what level of *apparent* effort the PR divisions of numerous companies went to back in the glory days of the Space Age.

In the war between the Nice Guys and the Bad Boys, the Nice Guys will lose badly on the Attract The Women front. And the Nice Guys will be perpetually stunned by that. But this has been the way of things since we were just jumped-up grassland apes. The ability – and willingness – to swing a club and bring down lunch is simply ingrained into DNA as an attractive feature.

There is of course another option: The Way Of The Asshole. You won’t be any more popular than the Nice Guy, and very possibly less popular… but you’ll be fully cognizant of it, and won’t be surprised. And will feel no compunction to either act surprised or gracious in defeat.

Instead of the “stuff in outer space is the common property of all mankind” bullcrap, this bill would seem to put across the crazy notion that those who go to the bother of actually exploring and exploiting asteroids would actually *own* them.

Another rare piece of early Dyna Soar color art. This one shows the Dyna Soar heading to space atop the centaur upper stage of an Atlas booster. And if you think you are seeing corrugations on the back of the spaceplane, you are correct. At this stage in the design process the Dyna Soar *did* […]

So the media is currently ulcerating over Trump suggesting that he’d like to see NFL owners fire players who decide to disrespect the US flag & anthem before games. Here’s the thing: 1: It’s the players right to disrespect the flag, the anthem, the US. 2: It’s any citizens right to say that he’d like […]

Yes, I’ve posted these before. But I feel it’s important for everyone to maintain a proper level of understanding of the encabulator, the turbo-encabulator and the retro-encabulator. And of course once you have an encabulator, you’ll need to diagnose it from time to time: There have of course been advances in the field […]

Argh. Facebook is not my favorite thing. But, apparently, it’s where all the cool kids hang out, so the Aerospace Projects Review Facebook page that I cobbled together years ago, I’ve started posting things in again. One of the weird things about Facebook is that you (apparently) can’t see a page unless you are signed […]

Oh, boy! Mayhem! A Group Of 62 Catholics Has Accused The Pope Of Spreading Heresy Not being Catholic, I have no dog in this fight. Still, it’s always entertaining when religious leaders tell other religious leaders they’re wrong. Wacky hijinks often ensue.

So, Star Trek Discovery plopped onto the airwaves tonight. My review: It was certainly pretty, but all those visuals were spoiled by a whole lot of “WTF am I looking at?” Especially with the “Klingons” who bore almost no relationship to any prior iteration of the Klingons, in biology, aesthetics or culture. Heck, they even […]

… in a drone: This is pretty much exactly the sort of footage that would have been impossible to get prior to the current generation of drones. So just imagine what people will be able to film once the batteries for drones are actually *good,* with the power and energy density of chemical fuels like […]

OK, let’s say your town is plagued by a transdimensional monster that takes the form of a killer psychotic clown. Who would be the best person to try to destroy this menace? That’s right, the goddamn Batman: And because why not: Bill Nye just walked into our elevator while I was snap chatting.. pic.twitter.com/LwCOITAEft […]

A deli worker was attacked, someone came across the counter and slashed at him with a knife. He fought back with a knife of his own, and the other guy got the worse of it. So, what happened? Did the city of New York throw the deli worker a ticker tape parade? Give him the […]